Are you using Email Marketing?

You go outside and open your mailbox. You receive the normal: bills, bank statements, maybe a phony million-dollar offer. But then, part way through it all, you discover an envelope from your favorite clothing store. “Thank you for being a loyal customer,” it says. “The next time you come by, allow us to treat you and additional 40% off your next purchase.”

Now I am not the coupon-clipping type of person, but when I run into an offer that is so relevant to me, I really can’t resist it. A lot of you are like that too. And moreover you know what? A lot of you check your email more often than your real world mailboxes.

That’s where email marketing strategies come in. Forget spam. Spam’s just the phony million-dollar offer, and email marketing is miles away from that. Email marketing is reaching the right customers, with the right offers.

Let me go back to that coupon you got from your favorite clothing store, and why don’t we consider it from the clothing stores point of view. In the event you clip that coupon and go to the clothing store, their direct marketing campaigns have been effective.

However, to get that coupon into your hands, the store had to purchase printing, order and stuff envelopes, address them to you and pay for postage. Moreover it’s likely that the store hired somebody to do the actual printing, possibly some other person to do the design, the envelope stuffing, etc. If you’ve ever in your life sent brochures or coupons in the mail, you’ll fully understand it’s both expensive and time-consuming.

This is the fantastic thing about email marketing campaigns. First of all, email marketing tools are packaged so you can do it yourself. The emails are pre-designed, and additionally the backend has already been taken care of for you. All you have to do is sit at your computer for approximately 10 minutes and click a few buttons.

Why don’t we get back into the store owner’s shoes. We have just delivered a 40% off email promotion to all the people who filled out our customer care survey and gave us their email addresses. We also included a “Forward to a Friend” link, so our patrons can email promotion to their close friends.

Now (and here comes my favorite part about email marketing), we can easily enter the Reports and Stats part of the email marketing software and get deep into the email marketing strategy. We are able to view just who opened the emails, and when they did it. You can actually see who forwarded their discounts to their neighbors.

And we don’t have to stop there. You could easily group all our readers who forwarded their coupons to a relative and give them an additional incentive (We all know they love to inform their family about us, so why not offer them an additional 15% Off when they bring in 2 or more relatives?).

Information is power, and email marketing is one of the best ways to accumulate that information and put it to good use. And so next time you receive that flyer from your favorite store, carefully consider the amount of needless expense and time that store owner is wasting. Take into consideration just how much information he’s passing up on, and carefully consider just how much better things could possibly be if he sent that flyer through email marketing.

And for those who are savvy use that instance to sell your email marketing services to them. You never know where you’ll find your next opportunity!